


22 Hours

by chunni



Series: Bridge Over Troubled Water [2]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Heavy Angst, Horror, Magic, Midquel, Older Mabel Pines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:34:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23127100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chunni/pseuds/chunni
Summary: Mabel spends 22 hours in that cave.
Relationships: Dipper Pines & Mabel Pines
Series: Bridge Over Troubled Water [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1661566
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	22 Hours

**Author's Note:**

> This is a midquel to my other story, Bridge Over Troubled Water. I strongly suggest reading that one first, otherwise this OS won't make any sense ;) I felt the urge to write down what happened to Mabel in captivity and this is the result. Perhaps it clears up some things in the main story.   
> (It's almost entirely angst, I'm sorry!)

**22 Hours**

~

~

~

It was like climbing the ragged face of a cliff. That kind of climb where you had to consciously put your hand a few inches higher, searching with your fingers for the right angle to hold onto the stones, holding your breath at every slow step of advance. That kind of climb that called for focus and determination and yet was so unbelievably time-consuming that it had you wondering if you were progressing at all.

It shouldn’t have taken such an effort to open the eyes, Mabel knew that.

When she did manage to open her eyes, it felt as if she hadn’t done so at all. There was darkness around her, a darkness that didn’t seem natural. A darkness like a blanket on her shoulders. Though, not the comfortable kind of blanket but a scratchy, heavy thing that made it difficult to breathe, that put fear into her heart even before her mind had time to remember what had happened.

It was cold here but there was no wind, she realised. There was no noise apart from her racing heartbeat, apart from her shallow, unsteady breaths. Absentmindedly, she pulled her coat tighter around her body with trembling fingers.

Mabel blinked again, a wave of strength waking her tired muscles, but, still, only black nothingness around her. _Where am I? What am I doing here?_ , her inner voice whispered over the sparks of panic surging through her body. _What happened? I don’t want to be here, no, no…_

She remembered now, the waves of nausea, the odd feeling of being watched as she scribbled down a few notes into the book she had not quite borrowed from the library, _the Craft of Summoning a Demon_. She remembered getting up and noticing shadows at the borders of her vision. She remembered fear like a sharp pang right in her chest. She remembered the urge to flee, the sound of a dozen pearls from her torn necklace pattering to the floor.

She remembered a touch on her shoulder burning like ice, pressing into her skin, and then there had been nothing more than the irresistible need to sleep. She had closed her eyes and followed its call.

“No, n-no…,” she whispered, thoughts running wild inside her head. She could feel the irregular shapes of stone and earth against her back, a wall of nature, solid and unyielding, and a part of her was yearning to hold onto it for support, yearning to follow its lines to the outside, because it was dark and scary and she couldn’t see, and who knew what was hiding here, with her, watching her?

She took a shaky but deeper breath and something made her pause, made her frown. Lavender. The scent was as strong as if she had walked right into a field of lavender flowers, strong enough to make her nose itch after a few more breaths, strong enough to make her sneeze violently. It smelled just like her perfume.

Her perfume.

Fighting against the paralysis the utter darkness was forcing onto her limbs, she reached out to search for her purse. Soon enough she realised that its slender chain was still slung over her shoulder, the velvet bag lying just a few inches next to her pulled-up feet.

She winced when her finger ran over the sharp edge of a familiar shard of glass, a part from the neck of the perfume’s flask probably. It was broken, albeit not entirely. Most of the lower half was still intact, a shallow pool of perfume water grazing the bottom.

Something fell on her forehead and she flinched, knocking the back of her head against the wall. The pain made tears spring up in her eyes and she couldn’t help but sob with balled fists, angry with herself for being scared of what must have been a simple drop of water from the cave’s roof. Ridiculous.

She wasn’t dead yet. There was nothing to be scared of that wouldn’t have killed her already. If it had been… that demon, she would have died an agonising death already, she knew that. It must be something else, there must be a different explanation. Perhaps it was only a nightmare after all. However, it felt real, and a quiet part of her knew it _was_ real as well.

Though, what could she do?

It was too dark to find a way outside and despite what the panicking voices in her mind were suggesting, she couldn’t just begin to walk into a direction. What if it would only lead her further into the cave’s insides, dooming her to wander around until exhaustion was her executioner? No. She mustn’t do that.

She had to be patient, had to be smart… like Dipper, if he were here with her. “ _Don’t just run off like a headless chicken_ ,” a voice that sounded distinctly like her brother scolded her. “ _Don’t be a headless chicken, Mabel.”_

Dipper. Her brother wasn’t here and he probably wouldn’t come in the near future, not with his aversion to Gravity Falls and its people, not with his job keeping him in another town. Still, her heart was clenching thinking of him and how much she didn’t want to be alone in this terrible sea of blackness and how much she wished she had called him earlier so they could have hunted this mystery like the Mystery Twins they were supposed to be.

She couldn’t change the past, though. She was here and Dipper wasn’t and she had to make the best of her situation.

“I am Mabel Pines,” Mabel murmured to herself, not daring to speak louder but still determined enough, given the circumstances. She shivered, suppressing the itch to sneeze. “And I’m not a h-headless… chicken.”

She would have to wait until the morning and the rising sun and hopefully enough light to see.

Or until a different kind of light would come to her.

She didn’t know what option she should hope for.

~

The change was subtle.

It couldn’t get colder. It couldn’t get darker.

And yet Mabel tensed up, the air around her wavering and pulsating as if in anticipation. It was almost as if something was nudging her skin, the darkness itself coming to life to embrace her. It was a sickening thought. Her stomach twisted as her grip around the purse tightened. She pressed herself closer against the wall, holding her breath, eyes wide and unblinking and horribly blind. Waiting.

She could hear him before she could see him.

“Are you smart?”

It wasn’t a voice as much as the groaning of trees in a storm, only vaguely male, the sound of nature itself pressed into something supposed to be human despite its otherworldly origin. At first Mabel couldn’t even understand the words, captured by a rush of adrenaline and fear. At first she didn’t even understand that he was talking to _her_ , and the realisation hit her like a punch in the face.

“Or are you just incredibly… lucky?”

_My brother’s the smart one_ , Mabel thought, unable to breathe, yet alone speak. Who could blame her? She began to shake her head and maybe that was supposed to be a reply. Perhaps it was only her mind physically denying reality.

She could see him now, or perhaps not really him but his eyes, empty ponds of acid in the midst of the cave’s thick darkness. They were staring right into her soul and she wanted to close her eyes, wanted to shut them to hide from the pain they inflicted on her. She couldn’t do it, paralysed like a deer in the headlights, her heart fluttering in her ribcage, and somewhere in her mind there was a picture, there was a book, and there was a title, simple and plain and yet horrifying in its own right. _Goatman_.

She knew those eyes.

It that moment Mabel knew she wouldn’t get out of this cave alive. Still, the human brain was a funny thing and it just didn’t want to let go of hope and optimism, no matter how slim the chances were. She wasn’t dead, she wasn’t dead, she wasn’t dead. As long as she was alive she would have hope.

“Answer me,” he growled.

Mabel winced, her whole body shaking, warily eyeing the dancing yellow dots that were much too close and yet coming closer still. She forced her lips to open.

“I d-d-don’t k-know…,” she whispered, voice as thin as the air surrounding her. She was almost sobbing in the end. “I’m not smart. I don’t think I’m lucky either. P-please, j-just… let me go.”

She knew the game was lost even before she spoke those words but she had to try, didn’t she?

For a long while there was only silence and his gaze making her neck tingle, those eyes without pupils that made it difficult to tell what he was looking at exactly. Though, her feeling couldn’t deceive her, and her feeling told her that he was watching her, that he might have begun to watch her even before this moment.

“You were looking for me, weren’t you?” A sound like a laugh, a sound like clashing swords. “Aren’t you happy you’ve found me? Aren’t you overflowing with joy?”

_No_ , Mabel’s mind answered, thinking of Stan, dead, thinking of Ford, dead. Thinking of her brother half a world away. She couldn’t have been further from happy. She barely managed to shake her head.

His sight must be excellent, though, because there was this unnatural laugh again.

“I thought so. Humans are terribly ungrateful. They’re always complaining about their life but when it comes to an end, they curl up and cry in fear. Do you want to cry?”

Mabel wouldn’t answer that question. She swallowed hard, bracing herself for her next words. “W-why am I not… dead?”

A sound like a grunted sigh. “Lucky it is, I see. Still, you will die and I am in a good mood, so I will tell you a secret.”

He exhaled slowly and Mabel could feel the warmth of his breath grazing her cheeks, a smell like copper and flowers and rancid milk making her nose tingle. She shuddered.

“I _hate_ lavender.” His yellows eyes were narrowed to small slits and Mabel was grateful for the darkness now because she wouldn’t have to see his snarling mouth, rows of glimmering teeth that had been the last thing oh so many doomed people had laid their eyes on.

He hated lavender, _alright_ , that was why she hadn’t been added to the police’s list of victims yet. She could use that information. She might not be as smart as Dipper but she knew how to make use of an arising situation.

“What makes you believe I won’t flee?”

“You can try, little girl.”

_I will_ , Mabel promised silently, tongue slipping forward to lick her dry lips. Her eyes were sensitive enough now to make her discover the outlines of something large and dark around the yellow of the demon’s eyes, revealing a goat’s head and too many arms for a simple man. She didn’t want to look at him and yet there was nothing else she could look at, not in this darkness.

A thought ran through her mind and she held her breath, reconsidered, and opened her mouth with the certainty that she would regret this.

“Why did you kill all these people? They haven’t done anything to harm you, they had a family and friends that miss them terribly. Don’t you even feel a little bit of regret? You could still stop… s-stop a-and leave Gravity Falls, you know…”

Silence, then a voice as plain and as cold as ice.

“What’s your name, girl?”

Mabel hesitated.

“Your name, girl,” he growled, creeping closer slightly, and Mabel couldn’t back away, not with the stones digging into her flesh already.

“Mabel,” she ground out. “Mabel Pines.”

“Mabel Pines,” he said, her name a horrifying promise, and she felt nauseous all over again. “You’re truly human, Mabel Pines. It’s almost… endearing. Though, it mostly makes me want to eat you all the more. I can hear your blood, the beating of your heart. _Thump, thump, thump_. Like a scared little hummingbird. I can almost… taste it, if only you hadn’t had that pitiful accident with the perfume. You can be proud, Mabel. It’s the sweetest scent I’ve smelled in a long time. I am certain you will be my favourite meal of them all.”

Mabel had to close her eyes. “You’re a monster.”

He didn’t like that. The sound of his claws scraping along the stone wall made her flesh crawl, shook her very core. She had to suppress the urge to press her hands against her ears.

“I will be back, Mabel Pines. Rest assured, you will die.”

~

Mabel tried to escape, of course.

She had gathered enough courage to creep along the wall on her knees, hands hastily grasping for the stone to make sure she was still going into the right direction, if it even was the right direction and not her path to hell. It hadn’t mattered, though. She had only been able to cover a few metres until her hand touched something that felt like dry oil, the air rubbery and dense, and it felt like going through the forest and finding yourself tangled into a mess of twigs and leaves.

She couldn’t make even the tiniest step forward, her lungs contracting as the weight of the air pressed onto her shoulders like bricks of a wall. It was only when she backed away that she could breathe again. It was no breath of relief, though.

_It’s his doing_ , she thought, pressing her lips into a tight line to keep herself from crying. A strangled sob still escaped her lips. _He’s somehow keeping me from leaving this damn cave. I can’t leave._

She was doomed.

~

How long would the perfume keep her safe? How long until the scent wasn’t strong enough to keep him away anymore?

A part of her wanted to pour what was left of it over her body but wouldn’t it be smarter to wait so she could make the most of it? Wasn’t it smarter to gamble, to save some time that could be spent trying to find a different escape, trying to find the loophole in the contract?

Another part of her wondered why she even cared, why she couldn’t give up because there was nothing she could do, was there? Was it really better to extend the torture when the end was unavoidable?

A yawn tickled her throat but she didn’t give in to it, couldn’t even think of sleep. How much time had passed already?

~

“Candy will realise I’m gone,” Mabel whispered to herself, unnerved by the constant silence that felt as if she had been thrown into space and there was no way for sound to propagate. At least that way she knew she hadn’t gone deaf. Her silent tears had left cold trails on her cheeks but she couldn’t really muster the strength to pull her trembling hands out of the insides of her coat to wipe them dry. “Wendy will wonder where I am. They will come looking for me.”

“I don’t think so,” an awfully familiar voice growled and Mabel froze. She hadn’t noticed him, and how couldn’t she have noticed him? A shiver ran through her body. Had she really been that unfocused and tired?

“I would kill them as soon as they made a step into my cave. They don’t have a perfume to buy them time, do they?”

_Damn_ , ran through Mabel’s mind and she had to suppress the urge to sob, new tears rising in the corners of her eyes. She hadn’t even thought of that but, of course, coming here would be as good as committing suicide. Knowing the measure he had taken to keep her inside these walls, she wouldn’t be surprised to know he had some kind of sense or system to know when anyone other than he himself would enter the cave. It was hopeless.

“I could go out and kill them even now. I could bring them to you… or what would be left of them. Their heads would be enough, I think. You could feel their lips opened to a frozen scream. You could imagine talking to them for a last time, wouldn’t that be a kind gift?”

Mabel’s stomach turned around, bile burning her throat.

“Even if I won’t survive,” she began, desperate frustration blinding the logical part of her brain and making her voice sharp. “Someone else will finish my work and I swear I’ll be looking down from heaven and laugh and enjoy your very painful death because nothing else is what you deserve.”

“I see.”

She couldn’t see anything but the gaze of his glowing eyes but there was a low hissing like the sound a massive snake might make slithering across the earth. She frowned, holding her breath as he listened, and then she noticed those eyes getting bigger, coming closer and closer still.

“No,” she mouthed, cold creeping into her very bones.

He wasn’t only approaching her, he was pressing against the barrier the lavender perfume had built for her. He was exposing himself to it just like a man drinking poison to develop an immunity. She took a shaky breath, all too aware of how the scent of her lavender perfume had faded to a bare shadow of what it had been in the beginning.

_I need more, I need to-_

Her train of thoughts came to an abrupt halt when she felt a claw against her cheek, its cold talon running across the line of her jaw, and she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think, and she felt as close to death as she had never before. There wasn’t enough pressure to cut into her skin but she could feel the power radiating from it as if it were burning, the flames licking at her flesh.

She knew that he could cut her if he wanted to and she knew that it was a conscious decision of him to wait, to enjoy her silent desperation and fear. She had no doubt he could hear her racing heartbeat, might be even able to feel the quick heaving of her chest.

The talon stopped at her chin forcing her to lift her head, forcing her to stare right into the dancing fire of his eyes. His breath grazing her cheek made her shudder and she clenched her teeth, forcing herself not to breathe, not to move.

A second of silence passed and there was another clawed hand, this time running through her hair as if trying to comb it, the low swishing sound making her want to throw up. A few loose strands fell over her ear and to her forehead, making her skin itch, but she didn’t dare to tuck them away.

She gasped when he took a handful of her hair and pulled it tight, making pain flare up along the crown of her head. A tear slipped out of the corner of her eye and rolled across her cheek. It was soon followed by a silent river of liquid pearls.

A second pair of hands found its way to her arms, enclosing them in a grip of iron, and then she wasn’t lying on the earth anymore but flying, floating, frozen like a fly in the spider’s web. Her heart stuttered. She kicked out but couldn’t reach anything, couldn’t see anything, blind and dizzy and terrified. Her whole body was shaking, her head spinning, her mind screaming at her to do something, _anything_ to save herself. Her eyes fell shut, unwilling to see, unwilling to live in this reality.

“P-please,” she choked out and the talon left her chin, giving her room to speak. Adrenaline sparked like poison through her veins. “I don’t want to die! I want to see my b-brother! I haven’t seen him in months, I c-c-couldn’t even say g-goodbye to him… I… I…”

It was hard to breathe and speak at the same time when her breaths were only panting gasps, quick and loud.

“Dipper,” she whimpered crying for unused chances and dumb life choices and so many terrible, unnecessary deaths. Crying for herself and what was awaiting her.

He didn’t say anything, maybe relishing her fear, maybe only waiting for the right moment to snap her head or tear the arm out of her joint.

She froze when something slimy yet rough nudged her cheek, her heart skipping a beat, her lips falling shut. It took her a few seconds until the horrible realisation hit her. He was licking her skin, lapping up her tears as if they were drops of wine.

_No!_ A wave of angry disgust overran her, and maybe that was what gave her the strength and quick-wittedness to jerk her arm away, to reach into her purse and throw what was left from the perfume against the yellow moons in front of her. _I won’t die!_

She cut her finger at the shards of glass and her muscles quaked in pain when her back hit the earth again but she couldn’t have cared less.

He screamed, and what a sweet sound that was.

When she opened her eyes again, pulse still racing, he was gone.

~

She wasn’t able to relax for a long while, muscles tense and mind sharp, because she was expecting him to come back and finish what he had begun between every beat of her accelerated heart. It didn’t come to it, though.

She was left alone with her thoughts once more.

Sometime during wondering if it would be a better death to cut her wrists open than to die of starvation wandering through the insides of the cave, she fell into an unsteady sleep.

She dreamed of shadows waiting in the corners of her vision. She dreamed of running over leaves and twigs, large trees looming over her. She dreamed of people yelling at her. There was Dipper, shaking his head and narrowing his eyes as he glared at her.

_Why did you do this? How could you be so dumb? You deserve to die if it’s your own fault, Mabel. It was your fault, yours alone… you will die Mabel, you will die a painful death just as the other people of Gravity Falls that have been found. Wendy will find your corpse, maybe, if there’s anything left of it when he’s through with you._

_Remember, Mabel, it could have been different. You could have lived, but you needed to go back, didn’t you? You needed to revenge two deaths from ten years ago, you couldn’t just let the dead rest, could you?_

_It’s your fault, Mabel._

When she jolted awake with a gasp, her spine hurt and the back of her head pounded in a painful rhythm.

She blinked hastily, breathed hastily, her entire body shaking and itching, and she turned her head and saw…

Light.

It wasn’t much but it was enough to illuminate the outlines of the cave, to reduce the blackness to a thick grey, stones and tufts of grass visible as her eyes began to get used to the twilight.

It was lunacy when she crept closer into the direction the lost sun rays were coming from. It was lunacy because she had done so before and it had ended in crashing into an invisible wall. I had ended in the feeling of drowning in oil and she had backed away and realised the hopelessness of her situation.

It should have been lunacy but she kept walking on, her skin tingling and her muscles aching, and there was no wall, there was no oil to swallow her, only the faint sensation of walking through a waterfall.

When she reached the opening of the cave, it felt like she could finally breathe again after being forced to live underwater for half an eternity.

She got up and began to run.

~

~

~


End file.
